29 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for April 17, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 99 : "text" Format
====== 29 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== |
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and
the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other
journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are
included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address-
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Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters,
viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome.
We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because
we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime. - Geoffrey Welsh
See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
|
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:53:53 -0700
From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: After Breach, Companies Warn of E-Mail Fraud
Message-ID: <ioa7oh$u5p$1@dont-email.me>
On 4/15/11 9:17 AM, Matt Simpson wrote:
> Unsure about attribution, but somebody wrote:
>
>>> My wife uses her email very carefully to a small group of social
>>> contacts. Yet, she gets some spam.
>
> How careful are the social contacts that have her email address? Are
> any of them the type who forward every silly joke, urban legend, etc. to
> everybody in their address book, with all the recipient addresses
> exposed on the To: line, so that your wife's address continues to
> circulate as the message gets forwarded again and again with the list of
> addresses getting larger? Sooner or later some spammer will get hold of
> that.
>
> Do any of her friends click malware links that load bots on their
> machines that suck all the email addresses from their contact lists and
> messages in their inboxes, and send them to spammers?
>
> I find that no matter how careful you are about giving out your email
> address, it's almost impossible to avoid giving it to somebody far less
> careful.
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Martha Washington once said "I let him out for one night, and ever
> since, it's 'Washington slept here', 'Washington slept here',
> 'Washington ...'"
>
> I'm sorry ! OK?
>
> Bill Horne
> Moderator
>
I have a few throw away addresses that I use for places like Best Buy
and Target, I noticed that those address started getting spam, in the
past they never had any. I set a couple of new e-mail address up and
then deleted those that had problems. ATT uses Yahoo and the spam
filters are really good, none get to my Thunderbird reader at all.
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2011 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co.
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2011 07:09:21 -0400
From: "Bob Goudreau" <BobGoudreau@nc.rr.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
Message-ID: <DCE7A5D3D8E24B248F1D018E20E355A1@meng.lab.emc.com>
David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
>
>> By SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
.........
>> To answer these questions, we need to begin with a more fundamental
>> question: How do we know that anything causes cancer?
>>
> Why not ask the millions (billions?) of dead mice that have given their
> lives over the decades to establish pretty solid statistical probabilities
> that many things cause cancer?
>
> You might also want to look at the statistics of the victims of the two
> atomic bombs dropped on Japan, there seem to be some pretty solid
> indicators there as well.
>
> "How do we know that anything causes cancer?" What a dopey question!
Not dopey at all, but a perfectly reasonable question. The article by Dr.
Mukherjee (a cancer researcher, not a Times reporter) didn't ask "DOES
anything cause cancer?" It didn't even ask "Do we KNOW that anything causes
cancer?" Rather, it asked the more interesting question: HOW do we know that
something causes cancer? It then proceeds to answer that question,
explaining the scientific and statistical techniques used to identify
something as a carcinogen, and briefly covering the major studies that have
attempted to answer the question of whether mobile phone usage can be thus
identified. I do recommend actually reading the article instead of just
flippantly dismissing it.
Bob Goudreau
Cary, NC
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 08:42:39 +1000
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
Message-ID: <pan.2011.04.16.22.42.36.428505@myrealbox.com>
On Sat, 16 Apr 2011 07:09:21 -0400, Bob Goudreau wrote:
> David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>>> Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
>>
>>> By SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
> .........
>>> To answer these questions, we need to begin with a more fundamental
>>> question: How do we know that anything causes cancer?
>>>
>> Why not ask the millions (billions?) of dead mice that have given their
>> lives over the decades to establish pretty solid statistical
>> probabilities that many things cause cancer?
>>
>> You might also want to look at the statistics of the victims of the two
>> atomic bombs dropped on Japan, there seem to be some pretty solid
>> indicators there as well.
>>
>> "How do we know that anything causes cancer?" What a dopey question!
>
> Not dopey at all, but a perfectly reasonable question. The article by Dr.
> Mukherjee (a cancer researcher, not a Times reporter) didn't ask "DOES
> anything cause cancer?" It didn't even ask "Do we KNOW that anything
> causes cancer?" Rather, it asked the more interesting question: HOW do we
> know that something causes cancer? It then proceeds to answer that
> question, explaining the scientific and statistical techniques used to
> identify something as a carcinogen, and briefly covering the major studies
> that have attempted to answer the question of whether mobile phone usage
> can be thus identified. I do recommend actually reading the article
> instead of just flippantly dismissing it.
>
> Bob Goudreau
> Cary, NC
You may well be right, I took the context of the question as just another
dopey media comment aimed at misleading the great unwashed (i.e, most of
us) rather than the context you explained.
If indeed it does explain how we indeed do KNOW then all well and good,
and in the original context of determining if Cellphones are a cancer
factor then it should explain how this determination may eventually be
made.
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2011 08:45:52 -0400
From: Regina_R_Monaco <remonaco@sonic.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: cancer
Message-ID: <670219C0-95B3-483A-AD04-9CE3C1622A35@sonic.net>
I know this is not strictly phone related but I could not resist.
It is known beyond any reasonable doubt that cancer may be directly
caused by, in addition to other mechanisms, the interaction of
cellular DNA with mutagens. These mutagens react chemically with DNA,
in many cases via well-know reactive pathways, and directly cause
damage leading to the incorporation of errors into the cell's DNA, and
the propagation of these errors lead to cancer in some population of
progeny of this damaged cell. Exposure to mutagens over time causes a
number of these carcinogenic lesions and a cell can only repair so
much of it's DNA. While not every lesion that is uncorrected leads to
a cancer, with enough mutagens and enough failed repairs, there will
occur a cell that is damaged in a way that allows the initiation of
oncogenesis.
There is quite enough experimental evidence over the past 50+ years to
make this a fact, and mechanism this has been well-reported in peer-
reviewed journals. The basic mechanism of oncogenesis by exposure to
environmental mutagens is not in question.
Burning tobacco produces many mutagens which can be shown to bind to
DNA and cause this sort of damage. Radiation causes physical damage to
DNA by impinging on it and knocking bits off.
It's not correct to say nothing and everything is true. Only true
things are true. People (or politicians, or journalists....)
obfuscating truth by presenting confusing arguments not based in
fact , or based on cherry-picked data - that is what causes confusion.
M2CW,
Regina
[Moderator snip]
***** Moderator's Note *****
I'm going to allow this post, but, frankly, I'm uncomfortable with
this subject and I'm going to keep it very low-profile. There's always
a need to counteract the endless hype and fearmongering that falls
from our TV screens like effluent from a sewerage outfall pipe, but
OTOH the subject of the trade-offs between health risks and technical
benefits is likely to get beyond the bounds of what the Digest is
intended to do.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: 15 Apr 2011 18:46:34 -0000
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
Message-ID: <20110415184634.42526.qmail@joyce.lan>
>We have never proven, in a scientific sense, that smoking causes
>cancer in humans. Why? The experiment would be unethical. We would
>have to take a large group of people, tell them to smoke for 30 years,
>and have the control group never smoke.
Fortunately for the progress of science, quite a lot of people have
conducted that experiment for us, and the scientists just needed to
collect the data, which was and is conclusive.
Given the number of mobile phones in use, you'd think that there would
be plenty of data to collect (unless, I suppose, they had the same
problem as the scientists who wanted to find a control group of guys
who didn't look at porn.) If there is an effect from using cell
phones, it's pretty subtle.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:33:39 -0400
From: Eric Tappert <e.tappert.spamnot@worldnet.att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: After Breach, Companies Warn of E-Mail Fraud
Message-ID: <4j3hq6l6pbrmoib9hbu0gljoq6jcjffdbp@4ax.com>
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:17:09 -0400, Matt Simpson
<net-news69@jmatt.net> wrote:
>Unsure about attribution, but somebody wrote:
>
>> >My wife uses her email very carefully to a small group of social
>> >contacts. Yet, she gets some spam.
>
>How careful are the social contacts that have her email address? Are
>any of them the type who forward every silly joke, urban legend, etc. to
>everybody in their address book, with all the recipient addresses
>exposed on the To: line, so that your wife's address continues to
>circulate as the message gets forwarded again and again with the list of
>addresses getting larger? Sooner or later some spammer will get hold of
>that.
>
>Do any of her friends click malware links that load bots on their
>machines that suck all the email addresses from their contact lists and
>messages in their inboxes, and send them to spammers?
>
>I find that no matter how careful you are about giving out your email
>address, it's almost impossible to avoid giving it to somebody far less
>careful.
>
>***** Moderator's Note *****
>
>Martha Washington once said "I let him out for one night, and ever
>since, it's 'Washington slept here', 'Washington slept here',
>'Washington ...'"
>
>I'm sorry ! OK?
>
>Bill Horne
>Moderator
Folks,
There is NO privacy on the internet. Never has been privacy, nor will
it ever exist. Of course, in the good old days, everybody's phone
number was published in a book (how's that for privacy!)...
Folks who want to protect their privacy shouldn't use e-mail or
usenet, as neither has any provision to insure privacy. Social
networking sites are simply billboards for all the world to see.
That's just the way the system works.
ET
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2011 09:53:15 -0600
From: Fred Atkinson <fatkinson.remove-this@and-this-too.mishmash.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: After Breach, Companies Warn of E-Mail Fraud
Message-ID: <20110416155420.44107.qmail@gal.iecc.com>
At 12:33 PM 4/15/2011, you wrote:
>Folks,
>
>There is NO privacy on the internet. Never has been privacy, nor will
>it ever exist. Of course, in the good old days, everybody's phone
>number was published in a book (how's that for privacy!)...
>
>Folks who want to protect their privacy shouldn't use e-mail or
>usenet, as neither has any provision to insure privacy. Social
>networking sites are simply billboards for all the world to see.
>
>That's just the way the system works.
>
>ET
There is no privacy on the Internet because we've never
incorporated encryption in any acceptable manner.
PGP didn't catch on like it could have. And I find that to
be too bad.
The last version of PGP I played around with had two to the
four thousand and ninety-sixth power worth of encyrption/decryption
key pairs.
That comes to approximately ten to the twelve hundred and
thirty-third power (bearing in mind that a mere trillion is only ten
to the twelvth power).
That's secure enough for most of us.
Yes, I did a research paper on PGP when I was in graduate
school. It's pretty dated (when PGP was far less powerful than now,
in the late nineties) but you can read it at
http://www.mishmash.com/fredspgp/pgp.html .
I did a lot of experimentation with PGP as well.
And I developed a three hour seminar on PGP that got
excellent reviews from my students at the Capital PC User's Group in
the Washington, DC area.
Read Father Bill Morton's PGP Page at:
http://www.rossde.com/PGP/FatherBillMorton.html . It is a prime
example of the need for privacy in telecommunications.
Regards,
Fred
***** Moderator's Note *****
The Internet has as much or as little privacy as its users are willing
to demand. We get the conveniece of email at a price, and those whom
insist on keeping their emails private have several different options
available:
1. X.509 (Certificate-based) encryption and/or signing is built in to
all the usual email clients. The certificates are now reasonably
priced and easy to obtain, and the rest is "automagic".
2. PGP or GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard) can be added to some email clients,
or used in a stand-alone mode, with a minimum of effort.
3. W.A.S.T.E. (http://waste.sourceforge.net/) and similar "groupware"
systems offer encrypted communication within workgroups.
But ...
If you have a perfectly implemented, well designed, and unbreakable
cipher, then anyone who wants the data badly enough will simply bypass
the codebreaking process and resort to rubber-hose cryptography. The
information is only as secure as the people, and the adage about a
secret being so only so long as only one person knows it comes to mind.
--
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:39:35 -0400
From: Eric Tappert <e.tappert.spamnot@worldnet.att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
Message-ID: <n24hq6t87v2s3ao1hc2i5ug54nsc142j0f@4ax.com>
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:35:51 -0500, John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
wrote:
>On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 12:29 AM, David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>
>> "How do we know that anything causes cancer?" What a dopey question!
>
>This was a popular hot potato with my science and engineering professors.
>
>We have never proven, in a scientific sense, that smoking causes
>cancer in humans. Why? The experiment would be unethical. We would
>have to take a large group of people, tell them to smoke for 30 years,
>and have the control group never smoke. And just because it causes
>cancer in non-human species doesn't mean it'll affect humans. This is
>the sliver of hope that the tobacco industry hangs on to. Remember,
>this is the industry that fought efforts to prevent children from
>smoking claiming smoking has never killed a child, which is
>technically true since they haven't smoked long enough to die from it.
>
>This brings me to a wider topic and I hope I don't stray too far off
>course. I really get the sense that nothing is true and everything is
>true. Pick your hot button topic: cell phones and cancer, global
>warming, vaccines and autism and you can find mountains of "research"
>"proving" both sides of the debate. It depends on who funds the
>research and how the numbers are spun.
>
>John
Folks who are worried about getting brain cancer from cell phones
simply should not use them. After all, we survived rather well
without them before 1982. Same as with cigarettes: if you don't
smoke 'em or hang out around smokers, you can't get cancer from them.
ET
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:48:15 -0500
From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
Message-ID: <NqKdnVHMYo6CIDXQnZ2dnUVZ_sCdnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>
In article <pan.2011.04.15.05.29.55.187586@myrealbox.com>,
David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:48:19 -0400, Monty Solomon wrote:
>
>>
>> Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
>>
>> By SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
>.........
>> To answer these questions, we need to begin with a more fundamental
>> question: How do we know that anything causes cancer?
>>
>Why not ask the millions (billions?) of dead mice that have given their
>lives over the decades to establish pretty solid statistical probabilities
>that many things cause cancer?
Why do some of those mice get cancer, and others -- exposed to exactly
the same experimental items -- do *NOT*?
>You might also want to look at the statistics of the victims of the two
>atomic bombs dropped on Japan, there seem to be some pretty solid
>indicators there as well.
Same question: why did some of those so exposed develop cancers, and others
did _not_?
>"How do we know that anything causes cancer?" What a dopey question!
The fact is that we do not know of ANYTHING that causes cancer.
Such a thing would mean that every person who was exposed to it would
develop cancer.
A 'statistical correlation' is not proof of CAUSATION, unless the
correlation is exactly 1.0 (or -1.0).
Yes, the risk of contracting cancer is well-established to be
significantly higher if one is exposed to various things on an ongoing
basis -- but nobody has quantified 'how much' exposure to what things,
over what period of time, will result, within a specified time-frame,
in a particular type/size of cancer in any given individual.
'Causation' is not proven, all that is incontrovertibly established is
"contributing factor" -- many would say "significant contributing factor".
Aside: personal opinion is that "(significant) contributing factor"
is sufficient basis to restrict/regulate and/or assign 'liability'.
Date: 16 Apr 2011 20:43:15 -0000
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
Message-ID: <20110416204315.62996.qmail@joyce.lan>
>A 'statistical correlation' is not proof of CAUSATION, unless the
>correlation is exactly 1.0 (or -1.0).
Don't be silly. I knew a guy who shot himself in the head and
survived. (He died from other causes about 50 years later.)
Therefore shooting people in the head at close range doesn't cause
them to die. On the other hand, if you survey the population of
people born before 1896, every single one of them who drank any water
is now dead. Therefore, drinking water killed them all.
Biological processes are complicated and subtle, and figuring out
what's a cause and effect rather than a coincicence, or a correlation
with some other cause is tricky. It requires both a good
understanding of statstics and a good understanding of the biological
processes. Simplistic misstatements of statistics don't help.
Like I said, if there's any biological effect of cell phones, it's
subtle, since there's tons of data and at least so far, that data
hasn't said anything clear one way or the other. Based on what I've
seen, any risk of cancer is swamped by the risk of stepping into the
street without looking while you're talking on the phone and being hit
by a bus.
R's,
John
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:45:42 -0400
From: Eric Tappert <e.tappert.spamnot@worldnet.att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Obama Disappointed With Lack of 'Cool' Phone in Oval Office
Message-ID: <d94hq61sklcn30ttg72hb5s3rdqjamjqkn@4ax.com>
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:34:48 -0700 (PDT), Lisa or Jeff
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>On Apr 15, 8:37 am, John Mayson <j...@mayson.us> wrote:
>
>> The president, in an unscripted moment with donors in Chicago, was
>> talking about the need to innovate in technology.
>
>Somewhere I recall reading that the White House, due to its
>communcation requirements, still maintains a cord switchboard. Anyone
>know accurately if that was true? A cord board is more flexible than
>a console.
>
>I understand that when the president says "Get me Mr. Jones", the
>White House operators do whatever it takes to locate Mr. Jones and get
>him to a phone, at any time and anywhere.
>
>President Lyndon Johnson had a thing about phones and had lots of them
>with fancy options.
>
>> Submitter's note: Lack of a cool phone is enough to keep me from
>> running for president.
>
>If I were elected prez (ugh!) there'd be one red 500 set (mostly for
>show but would be used for urgent calls), and a 500 style keyset (six
>buttons) with a side buzzer button panel. The fireplace coffee table
>often shown in pictures with guests would have a 302 set.
>
>There would be no phone in the bedroom since I don't like my sleep
>interrupted. If "the call" came in at 3 am, it would go to an
>answering machine asking the caller to call back at a more reasonable
>hour or go bother the vice-president.
Several years ago Lucent put in a PBX in the White House. I recall it
since I was working at the Reading Works at the time and one of the
environmental guys lied on a status report. The Company turned itself
in (there was no environmental damage at all, and the EPA agreed...)
but it landed us on the evil list of polluters with one other company,
Exxon Mobile who was on the list for the Valdez oil spill. Getting on
the list means that you couldn't do work for the federal government.
In any event, the PBX was half installed, so they finished the job.
ET
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:47:28 -0700
From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: How to Fix (Or Kill) Web Data About You
Message-ID: <2f6dna0WjLWtiTXQnZ2dnUVZ_rKdnZ2d@giganews.com>
Monty Solomon wrote:
> How to Fix (Or Kill) Web Data About You
>
> By RIVA RICHMOND
> April 13, 2011
>
> As more of our social lives, shopping sprees and dating misadventures
> take place online, we leave behind, purposely or not, a growing
> supply of personal information.
>
> Marketers, employers, suitors and even thieves and stalkers are
> piecing together mosaics of who we are. Even when it is accurate, it
> may not present a pretty picture.
>
> For a glimpse of your mosaic, type your name into Spokeo.com. Prepare
> to see estimates of your age, home value, marital status, phone
> number and your home address, even a photo of your front door.
> Spokeo, one of several services like this online, will encourage you
> to pay $15 or more, for a full report with details on income, hobbies
> and online social networks.
>
> Snoops who take the time to troll further online may also find in
> blog posts or Facebook comments evidence of your political views,
> health challenges, office tribulations and party indiscretions, any
> of which could hurt your chances of admission to school, getting or
> keeping a job or landing a date. Many privacy experts worry that
> companies will use this data against users, perhaps to deny insurance
> coverage or assign a higher interest rate on a loan.
> ...
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/technology/personaltech/14basics.html
>
I like that. It gives my P.O. Box as my address. Also, as to my home,
it says I live in that P.O. box. :-) It also says there is one child
living in my family unit....I don't think so.
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in
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TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational
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The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne.
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